There’s a long history of animals behaving suicidally — think of whales beaching themselves. There have even been cases of forlorn family pets drowning themselves.

If animals can be self-destructive, they could also then help us to better understand the same behaviors, according to researchers at the University of Exeter in the U.K. and the University of Manchester.

“It’s incredible how actually pervasive (suicide) is in nature,” said psychologist Thomas Joiner of Florida State University, author of the book Myths of Suicide. He said organisms of all sorts are known to self-destruct in one way or another, usually in order to protect their relatives — and so to save their genes.

Pea aphids, for instance, when threatened by a ladybug can explode themselves, scattering and protecting other aphids and sometimes even killing the ladybug. They are literally tiny suicide bombers, Joiner told Discovery News.

What Dog Growls[2] Mean
Dogs understand the meaning of different growls, according to a Hungarian scientist.

In 2008, Péter Pongrácz, a behavioral biologist at a Budapest university, monitored dogs’ heart rates to show that they seem to notice a difference between barks aimed at strangers and those directed at nothing in particular. Now, he has gone a step further and shown that dogs respond differently to different vocalizations, according to an article in Discovery News[3].

Pongrácz’s team recorded growls from 20 pet dogs in three different situations: a tug-of-war game with their owner, competing with another dog for a bone, and growling at an approaching stranger. Growls may convey more meaning than barks, says Pongrácz: wolves rarely bark, and he says dogs may have learned to bark to get human attention.

The team played the recordings to 36 other dogs that had each been left to gnaw on a bone. Only those that heard the food-guarding growls tended to back off from the bone and stay away.

Dogs With Bad Teeth
Banfield’s Applied Research and Knowledge (BARK) team has released new findings to help pet owners maintain and improve the health of their dogs’ teeth, according to petpeoplesplace.com[4].

The findings show that periodontal disease is the most common disorder affecting cats and dogs worldwide, and informal estimates put it’s prevalence as high as 85 percent.

According to their latest findings, certain breeds are more predisposed to periodontal disease than others. The 10 breeds most predisposed to periodontal disease are as follows:

There is no foolproof way to tell if an online pharmacy is legal, according to the FDA. To help pet owners protect their pets, the agency provides the following guidelines:

Before buying online, talk with a veterinarian. Some questions the FDA suggests are: “Do you trust the internet pharmacy site?”, “Have you ever worked with the company?”, and “Have other clients used that site?” If any of the answers are “yes,” what were the veterinarian’s experiences?

Watch for red flags. Some warning signs the FDA points out include: the site does not require veterinary prescriptions for prescription drug orders; the site has no licensed pharmacist available to answer questions; the site does not list physical business address, phone number or other contact information, the site is not U.S.-based; the site is not licensed by the State Board of Pharmacy where the business is based; the site does not protect your personal information.

Always check for site accreditation. In 2009, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) created a voluntary accreditation program called Vet-VIPPS (Veterinary-Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites). This program helps identify online pharmacy sites legally selling veterinary prescription products.

Report problems and suspicious online pharmacies.

If a pet has a problem with a medicine purchased online (for example, a reaction to the medicine), first contact the medicine’s maker. To report adverse drug events directly to FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) call 1-800-FDA-VETS.

PET CALENDAR

Tag Day
The American Humane Association[6] is celebrating Every Day Is Tag Day™ on April 3. This annual event encourages all pet owners to tag and microchip their cats and dogs so that a lost animal has a better chance of returning home if the unthinkable happens. “Most lost pets without identification are never reunited with their families,” says Dena Fitzgerald[7], American Humane’s program manager for publications and external communications. “At the very least, every cat and dog needs a collar and ID tag, but the best solution is to also microchip your pet for permanent identification.”